Wheeled personal conveyances such as wheelchairs are typically designed to transport a sitting person. So-called companion chairs are a lighter-duty mechanism having a similar operating purpose. Accordingly, both wheelchairs and companion chairs typically have leg riggings to support the transportee's lower appendages above the ground. Rollators are often viewed as a walking aid and hence often, though not always, lack such leg riggings. Nevertheless, like wheelchairs and companion chairs, many rollators include a seat. For convenience, as used herein the expressions “wheeled personal conveyance” and “rollator” will be understood to include all such conveyance mechanisms.
Many wheeled personal conveyances are designed presuming ownership and usage by a single user. Such wheeled personal conveyances are therefore sometimes designed to fold up to thereby facilitate storage (for example, in a vehicular trunk) and transport to a different place of use. Other wheeled personal conveyances are designed presuming shared stitutional use by a larger population of users. For example, medical services facilities (such as hospitals, medical clinics, outpatient facilities, and doctor's offices), rehabilitative and extended-care facilities (such as nursing homes and assisted-care facilities), and transportation hubs (such as airports) often have a number of wheeled personal conveyances available on site to transport visitors on an as-needed basis.
Use of institutionally-deployed wheeled personal conveyances can be sporadic. As a result, some or even most of the wheeled personal conveyances at a given institutional facility may be presently unused at any given time. In many cases, many of these unused wheeled personal conveyances are stored together at a staging area (such as in a foyer near an entrance to the facility) or in a storage area (such as a storage closet or room). To save space, it is known to nest one rollator within another in the same manner that grocery carts are typically nested one within the other; i.e., by nesting the rearward rollator within the forward rollator through the back of the forward rollator. Though suitable for at least some purposes such an approach does not necessarily meet all needs of all application settings and/or all users.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity. That said, these illustrations are drawn to scale. Common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment, however, may not be depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.